


To The Stars

by Roccolinde



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 08:48:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28468545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roccolinde/pseuds/Roccolinde
Summary: The thing with soulmates is that there is a logical process–you tell the other person your name, where you live, you make arrangements to meet if you can. It is difficult, if you do not have the resources, but it is not impossible. Not that it matters--his soulmate offers none of this information, and neither does Jaime. There is no need; they are nothing to each other, merely a faceless swirl of letters that arrive once, twice, sometimes three times a year when fear or elation or loneliness is more than they can bear.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 37
Kudos: 165
Collections: JB Festive Festival Exchange Stocking Stuffers 2020





	To The Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [majicienne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/majicienne/gifts).



> Majicienne prompted "Soulmate AU" for the Festive Chillfest, and I am a sucker for soulmate ink AUs, where words written on your skin appear on your soulmate's as well. It makes for some excellent connections in the face of loneliness stories, and this is my humble contribution to the trope.

Not everyone in Westeros has a soulmate, and when Jaime and Cersei are seven they sneak a small pot of Ink from their mother’s solar and spend a long afternoon penning messages to each other in all the places hidden beneath their clothes. It does not work, but nor does it matter; they know they are destined to be together and that will suffice.

When he’s fourteen and a squire, a shakily written ‘ _Are you there?_ ‘ appears on his upper arm; he knows it is not Cersei’s hand, and so he doesn’t reply. Why look for a soulmate when he already has his sister?

When he’s seventeen and listening to the screams of the Queen, when the smell of burning flesh taints his clothes—he buys a pot of Ink and writes ‘ _I can’t’_ and hesitates. He can’t stop hearing the screams, he can’t uphold his vows, he can’t… ‘ _I can’t sleep’_ he writes, the only safe thing to say. He does not expect a response, but the next night he feels a slight chill he’d experienced once before. ‘ _Look at the stars,’_ his soulmate has written. Nothing more, no explanation, no reason. He scrubs at the message until his skin is raw, and the pearlescent ink has faded away. 

He hopes that he will never hear from them again.

* * *

The thing with soulmates is that there is a logical _process_ —you tell the other person your name, where you live, you make arrangements to meet if you can. It is difficult, if you do not have the resources, but it is not impossible. Not that it matters—his soulmate offers none of this information, and neither does Jaime. There is no need; they are nothing to each other, merely a faceless swirl of letters that arrive once, twice, sometimes three times a year when fear or elation or loneliness is more than they can bear. Never more than a sentence or two, never with specifics. After Aerys he tells them that he did the right thing, the only person he dares voice such a thought to. _Look at the stars_ , she (for he presumes it is a she) writes in response. She tells him that she is not made to be an heir. _Look at the stars_ , he returns back, the words oddly soothing. On and on, a thousand tiny moments of their lives are exchanged, and yet he knows nothing about her—not her name or her home or even what these exhilarating moments of excitement or crushing moments of pain are truly about. And she knows him equally little.

‘ _I’m off to fight’_ his soulmate writes, and he thinks perhaps he has been wrong all along, that his soulmate is a man. There would be some sense in it, for he knows his heart belongs with Cersei. It hardly matters though; as Robb Stark’s prisoner, he can hardly respond. He does not hear from his soulmate again.

* * *

Two days after the Bloody Mummers take Jaime’s hand, they stop for the evening and allow his once-captor-turned-fellow-prisoner to take him to the nearby pool to clean the sweat and vomit and shit from him. He is feverish, certain he will die, exhausted beyond all measure; when the cool water hits his open wound, he whimpers.

She gives a soothing murmur in that deep voice of hers, gentle as she lifts his arm from the water, holding him steady as she bathes him. “I know,” says the woman he has despised for so long. “It will be over soon. Look at the stars.”

The sky is vast above him, as dark and unfathomable as her eyes. Unworthy, he turns away from both.

* * *

He does not voice his suspicions. It might be a coincidence, or some strange Stormlander phrase. A hallucination, perhaps, his fevered self conjuring kindness from a woman who has not shown any inclination towards it. It does not _matter_. Even if she was his soulmate, it will not regrow his hand. It will not make him live. And when she chides him to survive and take revenge, it is no destined connection that pulls the bread to his mouth but his own spite. 

By the time they arrive at Harrenhal, he had almost entirely forgotten the cool water of that pool. He is certainly too fevered to think of it as he approaches her in the baths, as he spills the story of Aerys and wildfire before her, daring her to judge him so. She is still gentle when she catches him, as she pulls him from the water and calls for aid. He still does not think of it.

She sees him differently after the bath. She meets his eyes and calls him Ser Jaime and allows his moments of guidance. Entrusts him with her very honour, with a task to save the Stark girls and return them to their mother though she has no reason for such faith. She is stubborn and glorious and brave, and he thinks he sees her differently too. 

He is not thinking of fate and destiny and words written in Ink when he rides back to Harrenhal, only _Brienne_. 

* * *

There are weddings, three of them, and so many deaths. A growing certainty he cannot explain, made certain when he sees a message she has composed to her father, the script more familiar now than his own attempts at left-handed scribbles. There is still no good to come from it, but still he knows, believes he knows, and cannot forget.

In time, there is a Valyrian steel sword, and armour. There is a pot of Ink he slips amongst her gifts, and she _stares_ at him when he does, those blue eyes of hers wide as a startled doe’s, as if expecting him to explain. He’s complained about her dullness many times, but there’s no way she is that obtuse. 

“Sole of the foot,” he says, knowing nobody will see messages there before they fade away. “Now come on, your final gift is waiting.”

It takes some days for that chill to cross his foot, and the message is simply ‘ _Podrick lost the horses_ ’. And he’d known, he must have known, but the confirmation across his skin makes him feel sick. ‘ _Look at the stars’_ he writes back, before scrubbing message and reply from his body. He does his duty in King’s Landing, hating how relieved he feels at every one of Brienne’s sparse updates. Always brief, always about her quest.

_I found Arya and lost her._

_Sansa is with Baelish._

_Sansa has been married to Ramsay Bolton._

_She’s safe._

She is alive. Brienne is alive, and it makes all the shit in King’s Landing a little easier to bear. He means to update her about his own life, spiraling so quickly from what he’d expected, but how does he explain that the woman he loves has made horrifying choices? How does he explain…

So he writes nothing, save _‘Look at the stars’_ when her grief bleeds into her stalwart words. It will have to be enough.

* * *

When he sees her at Riverrun, it is akin to being punched. She is there before him after so long, as stubborn and honorable as ever. And yet still they say nothing, dare not acknowledge the words exchanged across a continent; he is not certain “It will always be yours” is any less exposing. 

He’s already looking at the night sky when her message comes that night.

Sometimes he thinks his soulmate should change him, should make him a man that would stand up to Cersei, should make him the man of honour she sees in him. It doesn’t. That’s on him, as it’s always been; it takes a broken promise of epic proportions for him to really understand, but when he leaves King’s Landing months later with only the last dregs of a pot of Ink, he has just enough to send a single message. There are so many things he wants to say to her, _I love you, I see that now_ and _Stay safe_ and _I’m coming_ , but _Cersei sends no army_ is more important than it all.

* * *

Perhaps they were the wrong words. Perhaps she did not wish to hear others. Either way, when he arrives in Winterfell she speaks for him at his trial, and yet cannot meet his eyes. Expects his cruelty, his japes, and flounders when he does not offer them. He is tired. Tired of games, of unworthiness. And still, neither one of them talks about it. Soulmates. Gods though, he feels it during the battle, in the way they fight together, in the clawing desperation he has to keep her alive. Perhaps that will be enough.

After—after the battle and after the feast and after he’s buried his cock so deep in her he thought he’d die with the pleasure—she asks him how he’d known, all those years ago. He tucks his nose in the crook of her neck and tells her of a bath, that first one. She tells him that it is something her mother would say, when she was young— _Look at the stars, and remember those who care for you see them too_. For a lonely child, it had meant everything. 

“I did not—” she begins, her fingers running softly up and down his spine. “Whatever you meant to say that first time, you hesitated. I was… eleven? and it was the only advice I had.”

He loves her. He loves her not because he is destined to, but for the small moments of choice that have come because of this connection, and for all the things he knows of her outside of it. All the things he knows of himself. 

When he leaves Winterfell, he brings a pot of Ink with him. He knows apologies will be inadequate, but he can’t bear to lose that connection; he’s stopped to rest his horse and take a meal around midday when a familiar chill shivers across his forearm. _Look at the stars_ , it says. _Look at the stars,_ he replies.

Every day, morning or noon or night, the message arrives; every day he uses his rapidly dwindling ink to return it, until the day he is captured. Through the flaps of the tent that holds him captive, he can see the stars.

* * *

Brienne is halfway to King’s Landing with Sansa when she feels a sensation she has not felt in weeks; not since the time of the battle for King’s Landing. A sensation she was certain she would never feel again. 

_Look at the stars_ , it says, _and know that I am waiting._

They travel a little faster. 


End file.
